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PHILADELPHIA: 

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1888. 



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PHILADELPHIA: 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY. 

18 88. 






Copyright, 1888, by J. B. Lippincott Company. 




JOHN ADAMS. 



Adams, John, a distioguislied American statesman, 
the second president of the United States, was born in 
Braintree, about 40 miles from Boston, in the then 
British colony of Massachusetts Bay on the 19th of 
October 1735, old style. He was the eldest son of John 
Adams, a farmer in comfortable circumstances, and dis- 
tinguished himself at Harvard College. He at first 
intended to become a minister, but the orthodox teach- 
ings of that day ^ drove him from the profession of 
divinity to that of the law/ After his graduation in 
1755, he was master of a school for three years at 
Worcester, Massachusetts, studying law meanwhile, and 
was admitted to the bar in 1758. For the practice of 
the law, he was pre-eminently qualified by these natural 
endowments — a sound constitution of body, a clear and 
sonorous voice, a ready elocution and intrepid courage, 
characteristics which served him in excellent stead in 
the stormy political career which he was destined to 
pass through. 

In 1768 Adams removed from Braintree to Boston — 
then a town of about 16,000 inhabitants — where he 
soon acquired ^ more business at the bar than any other 
lawyer in the province.^ Soon after his settlement in 
Boston, the Attorney-general of the province ( an officer 
of the crown) tendered him the post of Advocate- 
general in the Court of Admiralty, an offer which his 



4 JOHN ADAMS. 

ardent sympathies with the colonists, as against the 
crown, constrained him to decline. Important questions 
touching the rights and duties of the colonies under the 
crown were at this time being freely debated, and Adams 
is credited with having struck the key-note of the revo- 
lution which separated the colonies from the mother- 
country, by protesting before the governor and council 
in 1765, against the enforcement of the Stamp Act, and 
against any right of parliament to tax the colonies with- 
out their consent. Although one of the most resolute 
and prominent of the advocates of the popular cause, 
he appears never to have countenanced or encouraged 
those violent excesses of the colonists which ended in 
coercive measures on the part of the crown ; and when, 
in March 1770, some soldiers stationed in Boston fired 
on a mob and killed several persons, his sense of duty 
induced him to imperil his popularity by acting as 
counsel for the soldiers, who were tried for murder. In 
the same year the people of Boston elected him a mem- 
ber of the general court (the legislature) ; but his health 
failing, he withdrew from public life, and removed his 
residence, in 1771, to Braintree. Meanwhile he was 
chosen one of the five delegates from Massachusetts to 
the first Continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia 
in September 1774. 

Here he found a fit arena for the exercise of those 
great talents, both for business and debate, which ulti- 
mately raised him to the leadership of that body. He 
proposed and secured the election of George Washington 
as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army; he 
carried (May 1776) a resolution that the colonies should 
assume the duty of self-government ; and on the 7th of 



JOHN ADAMS. 5 

June seconded a motion made by Eichard Henry Lee, 
of Virginia, that these colonies ' are and of right ought 
to be free and independent states.' The support on the 
floor of congress of this motion and of the ' Declaration 
of Independence' which followed, devolved mainly upon 
Adams, who, in the face of a sturdy opposition, ac- 
quitted himself with such ability as to lead Jefterson to 
style him ' The Colossus of that debate/ 

The public duties which devolved upon Adams after 
the passing of the Declaration of Independence in con- 
gress are reported as something enormous. He was 
appointed president of the Board of War, and a member 
of upwards of ninety committees, of twenty-five of which 
he was chairman. He records that he was kept con- 
stantly at work from four o'clock in the morning until 
ten at night. After months of these incessant labours, 
he was granted a long vacation in the winter of 1776-7, 
and finally retired from congress in November of the 
latter year. He was, however, immediately appointed 
a commissioner at the court of France, from which he 
returned in 1779, and took part in a convention to 
frame a constitution for the state of Massachusetts. In 
November he again embarked for Europe, armed with 
powers from congress to negotiate a treaty of peace and 
commerce with the mother-country (with which the colo- 
nies were still at war) ; but the object of his mission 
becoming known at Paris, the jealousy of the French 
ministry was aroused, and through their influence his 
powers were revoked. He next visited Amsterdam, in 
an endeavour to interest Dutch capitalists in the cause 
of his country; and in January 1781 he was authorised 
to represent the colonies at the court of Holland. Mean- 



Q JOHN ADAMS. 

while a new commissioD, consisting of Adams and four 
coadjutors, had been appointed by the American congress 
to settle the terms of peace between the United States and 
the mother-country, and on the 3d of September 1783 
the treaty was signed. In 1785 Adams was appointed 
minister to England, a position which he held until he 
was recalled, at his own request, in 1788. While in 
London, he published his Defence of the Constitution and 
Government of the United States (3 vols. 1787). 

In 1789 he became vice-president of the United 
States — General Washington being inaugurated presi- 
dent. Washington and Adams were re-elected in 1792 ; 
and at the close of their administration in 1796, Adams 
was chosen president by the Federalists — Thomas Jeffer- 
son, the republican candidate for the presidency, becom- 
ing vice-president. An administration chiefly noted for 
fierce dissensions among the leaders of the Federal party, 
especially for a bitter hostility between Adams and 
Alexander Hamilton, was followed by the defeat of 
Adams (who had become a candidate for re-election) in 
1800, and the election of Jefferson and Aaron Burr, the 
democratic candidates, as president and vice-president. 
Chagrined at his defeat, and burdened with a sense of 
what he deemed his undeserved unpopularity among 
the members of his own party, Mr. Adams now retired 
to his home at Quincy, Massachusetts, where he passed 
the remainder of his life in comparative obscurity. He 
died July 4, 1826. 

BeeWorJcs of John Adams, edited by his grandson, C. F. Adams 
(10 vols. 1850-1856) ; Life of John Adams, by J. Q. Adams and 
C. F. Adams (2 vols. 1871) ; John Adams (American Statesmen 
Series), by John T. Morse, jun. (1885). 



